Amongst the civ community, there seems to be a widespread desire for the next civ to be different to all previous civ games. A completely new game, with a completely fresh feel, whilst retaining that quintessential civ essence. So what shape should Civ5 take, as a whole game?

To make civ 5 anew some new concepts could be applied,
you may consider them ideas, maybe ideas that are shaping the game with main features.

1.
SCORING

We play to win, mostly
My idea is to make scoring so that it takes account of diplomacy or the character of your civ

It could be important: not to get much score for actions that are "illogical" ("immoral"?) from the state of diplomacy:
For instance: Do you wish to do evil (war, spying, no open border, denying kind request) on a civ friendly to you? OK, but youl will not get (much) score for doing so...

Also, you could get more score for doing things that are in accordance of your trait:
aggressive, spiritual etc

2.
SOCIETY, INNER POLICY, REVOLUTION

We now have only a chain of cities, we don't see and deal with our civ as a whole, as a nation. There is no real society in the game. Demographic features could have more effect (age, education, fertility). More than just being happy or not.
There should be more about the people of your land: how they behave, how effective they are. Perhaps layers of society.... employment... it could be done in part by new civics.

Also: inner politics - stability (like in RFC), from this comes the fear of Revolution (RFC also has this)

*

There may be more ideas - of course...

But I think only 2-3 main new features can be added to the next civ, like religions/corporations and Apostolic Palace was in civ 4

It should include improved interface, such as the BUG Mod, improved rules such as Moctezuma's Influence Driven War ( which allows successful defense of a battlefield to factor into a tile's cultural control), and Dale's Combat Mod which offers ranged bombardment and target options for arial bombardment. These are included in the most popular modpacks. That being said, I'll try to focus first on things which aren't available in Mods.

1)Hexes. ( I know, it's controversial. If it is ever done, it would be a core game thing, so I figure this is the appropriate place to cite it ).
No need to revisit that discussion.

2) More terrain elevations, including below sea level. I'd love to be able to have plateaus, Cliffs of Dover, a Great Rift Valley, a Death Valley , a Loch Ness, A Dead Sea, a Victoria Falls..a Grand Canyon, you get the idea, we need cliffs or fused hills for that to become possible.

3) Navigable river terrain , which would be in the center of tiles , rather than between them, for quick recognition.

4) An easier to use map editor, World Builder is awkward. It should have the basic abillity to import a map from the internet and convert the land into land and the sea into sea for starters. Or reverse them. The Great Lakes Map in Civ III which reversed the land and water was one of my all-time favorites.

5) Improved worker management. I understand that I need to manage my workers, or they will be no better than the A.I , but I'd like not to have to do it so often. It gets annoying in my huge/marathon games , like giving recon instructions every turn. I'd like to be able to give my worker groups to-do lists, or open a city screen , point to a tile and type c for cottage, r for road , etc. and have the work parties perform the tasks in the order I entered them.

6) Ethnic huts. I get tired of seeing the same goody hut all over the globe. It's fine for the forrests. I'd love to see a grass shack in the tropics, an igloo in the snow, a yurt or teppe on the plains, and a bedouin tent in the desert. For that matter, I'd like to have a few nomadic huts that wandered around like warriors on explore, that might evade civs for a while and sometimes turn up in territory you've already explored. They could have a map of everywhere they've been, or a tech useful to themselves such as hunting rather than agriculture, animal husbandry &horseback riding rather than mining & metalworking... so a nomadic tent would be more likely to pop a large map or even astronomy, but it would produce more units if they were hostile.

7) Migratory herd animals. I don't mean lions and panthers and bears. I'd like to see , bison(in grassland& woods ), wildebeasts/antelopes (plains), caribou/musk oxen / mammoths (on tundra), maybe camels and goats in the desert. The herd animals wouldn't attack units, although the herds would pillage farms and pastures on your borders if you didn't have a worker or unit of some kind on it. If you succesfully attacked/destroyed the herd, your nearest city would get a one time commerce/food/production boost( varying according to herd ), kind of like working a good tile. On the other hand, if you didn't attack the herds, and your cultural borders enveloped them somewhere between the barrier fat crosses, they would provide some continuous happiness to each adjoining city, and a bonus if you ran environmentalism. Predator animals and barbarians would live in balance with the herds, only "civilized" people would destroy a herd.

8) How about a graphic illustratuion when a random fire, flood, earthquake, volcano, twister or tidal wave, etc. hits? Then it could be frustrating and fun to watch at the same time.

Maybe I better post before my connection times out.

__________________
Civ IV BTS /Huge/Marathon/Single Player/Mods
History in the Making ,Civ IV Road to War , Legends of Revolution , History of the Three Kingdoms , and Grand Inquisitions.

Amongst the civ community, there seems to be a widespread desire for the next civ to be different to all previous civ games. A completely new game, with a completely fresh feel, whilst retaining that quintessential civ essence. So what shape should Civ5 take, as a whole game?

1) Hexagonal tiles.

2) Units no longer constructed like buildings - have a separate production queue, or, even better, some kind of recruitment/training queue.

3) Workers no longer managed as units - instead, right-clicking on a tile brings up a menu where hammers/gold can be spent to improve said tile, the cost depending on the improvement, distance from settlements, civics, etc.

4) A migration system, whereby settlements lose population to others with greater happiness - certain civics could exacerbate/curtail this process.

5) Having more of a resource provides proportionally more bonuses, and certain resources (organic one, mainly - crops and animals) can be cultivated, that is, spread to new tiles.

9) Better A.I.- I'd like to see the A.I have random optional strategies. A predictable A.I. is an exploitable A.I. An unpredictable A.I. is highly replayable. I'm hoping that Civ V is more about adding optional strategies for the A.I. as we increase difficulty levels than it is about adding bonuses for them.

I agree with you, but it's a pipe dream for now . Any coding other than just attacking in logical pathing places that is consistent would allow the human player to exploit it. I guess you could just have the AI randomly do things, like send more pillage stacks and not a SoD, or split SoD, or naval invasion etc., but without great care it could cause a lot of AI stupidity - and more of that than we're used to would be too much .

Maybe the best way would be to hard code like 6-8 attack/defense patterns patterns, and have the AI hit with them at random. The player might know that the AI will attack X city with a naval invasion, and counter it. HOWEVER, if rather than "will attack" it becomes "has a chance to attack there 1/4 of the time, but also may hit y, z, etc", it would place considerably more duress on the player in terms of dealing with the AI. I think this approach should be used in general AI tactics - hardcoding things that would be exploitable, except that the AI has a chance to do other things that going for the exploit would be weaker against.

Of course, the AI might have to lose some of its bonus power if that's done effectively . "

I'm of a like mind on this. I've often wished that the designers would copy some strategies from the humans here- a proper ax rush, medieval siege ,amphibious assualt, a UU strategy, etc. and add them into the bag of tricks to be selected at random. Then if they could train the A.I to feint , mix and match chokes, daggers, sledge hammers....

Imagine a properly constructed ax rush bypassing your border cities and marching strait for your capital. Naturally, you commit your rapid re-action force, switch to chariot constrution and shift a couple defenders to the capitol. Only then you find that a seperate pillaging party showed up out of nowhere a couple turns later or split off from the SOD , -and took out your horses and metal . The SOD has made a right turn towards your lightly defended commercial city on the coast or reversed to crush your border cities. Your capital was not the target and you can't build proper replacements to fight this war!

__________________
Civ IV BTS /Huge/Marathon/Single Player/Mods
History in the Making ,Civ IV Road to War , Legends of Revolution , History of the Three Kingdoms , and Grand Inquisitions.

Amongst the civ community, there seems to be a widespread desire for the next civ to be different to all previous civ games. A completely new game, with a completely fresh feel, whilst retaining that quintessential civ essence. So what shape should Civ5 take, as a whole game?

P.S: Argetnyx asked me to create this thread because he can't.

This would be Argetnyx who mostly agrees with me that most of the changes that came from remaking Civ 4 from scratch were mistakes and we should go back to the tried-and-trusted Civ 3 model ? (Except there are places I think Civ 3 made mistakes and we should go back to the tried-and-trusted Civ 2 model, where I do not recall Argetnyx exressing a strong opinion either way.)

In the interests of being constructive, my own notions about what Civ 5 should ideally be like overall, in summary;

First and foremost; port CivRev to the PC. Then anyone who wants short snappy games and does not want to have to do the actual empire management stuff can be directed that way, and Civ 5 can be designed around giving real strategic depth. (With, if you prefer, the capacity to turn some of the complexity off.)

Firstly, it should be a longer game. With a bigger tech tree and more eras (Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, Modern, Space Age, and optional near and far future ages, for preference.). 200 techs is about the minimum I would really be happy with.

I want no unique units. no unique buildings, and no difference between available techs at the beginning, if any. The differences between civilisations should arise entirely from their strategic adaptation to the environment.

I am a strong proponent of keeping the classic square grid, and of not messing about with tactical scale anything. I am also a strong proponent of the very essence of Civ being that the nature of your empire is an emergent property of your cities, and that managing cities, and not managing empire-level stuff, is the most important aspect.

Specifics: military strength has been too important in every Civ game to date. There are a number of ways I'd like to see this rebalanced. One would be to have the increase of unit strengths across time (represented as independently varying attack, defence, hitpoints and firepower) be exponential. If you focus on having a tech lead, you should be able to with six units hold off forty units of the previous era any time. I would like to see Civ 1/2-type bribery come back (so that focusing on being rich would be a valid way of overcoming a militarily stronger opponent), and I would like to see culture war beefed up so that there's a fair chance a culturally stronger civ can cause units from a culturally weaker civ to defect if they are on its ground. I want the Civ 4 promotion system scrapped entirely.

I definitely want quantitative resources. I want resource trades to involve physical caravans which one has to physically move about, and worry about protecting, and can steal from other players. I also want food caravans.

I want settler and worker unit classes which acquire additional capacities over time and can be upgraded. I want settlers and workers that cost population rather than stalling growth in their home city.

I want air units that are actual units, like in Civ 1/2, and none of this messing about with missions. I want air transport units, and no teleporting airports or teleporting paratroopers.

I want many units with hidden nationality.

I want "barbarians" that upgrade over time through most of the game, becoming contemporary revolutionaries, partisans or terrorists as the case may be.

I want terrain to need continuous upgrading over time; irrigation->chemical fertilisers->GM crops, for example, and it to become possible to mine more effectively with Gunpowder and again with robotics. I want the ability to build canals. I want roads to upgrade to Industrial Revolution railroads and then to high-speed rail or maglevs. I want similar options for upgrading sea squares, and for landfilling coast squares. I want all of this to be something that needs worker investment, and to be something that is never completely done (unless you play out 1700 extra turns at the end of the game) so there are always choices to make as to how best to optimise). Ultimately, in the late game, I want terraforming options akin to those in Civ 2. No tile should be entirely unusable. I do not want improvements like cottages that get better by themselves. I also want a "parkland" happiness/health benefit in the later game for tiles which do not have any improvements on them, so that in some circumstances you might need to dismantle existing improvements.

I want layered maps. I want an air layer to become available when one gets flight, and an undersea level to become available when one gets submarines, and an orbital layer to become available once one gets space flight. I would be positive about being able to build floating or underwater cities in contemporary or near-future settings. I want to have to develop an orbital presence at least as large as the contemporary real-world one in order to be able to build one's starship; I want that to be built in orbit, as a physical thing that one can fight over, or sabotage, as well as defeating while in transit by attcking the civ that built it.

I want one production queue, with productivity that can be redirected trivially from anything to anything else. I want all productivity to be valid for building Wonders, and I want Wonders that have a large enough effect to actually mean something. I want overflow production to be kept, and if possible to be able to build more than one unit per turn.

I want corruption that affects money, waste that affects production, and health that affects food generation. I want all of these to be things that can vary independently and that can be treated with a different set of approaches. I also want pollution back, and nuclear fallout as a distinct thing from other forms of pollution, both as damaging squares and as accumulating to cause global warming or nuclear winter that is genuinely catastrophic.

I want fixed governments, more of them, and ones that need continual change over the course of the game to stay competitive. I want different meaningful options that suit different strategies. I want sweeping increases in efficiency and production in moving from earlier to later-game governments such that one can't afford not to have revolutionary change.

I want stability, as several people have suggested, implemented by a refinement of the unhappy people/civil disorder/revolution mechanism pre-Civ 4 to allow for regions to break off and declare independence.

I want slavery represented by special units that enslave their opponents, and slaves added to cities being distinct from other citizens. I want the balance of exponential improvements and so forth to make slavery economically unfeasible once past mid-game.

I want religion that works by converting certain numbers of citizens, rather than whole cities. I want some governments to have bonuses for being as purely one religion as possible, and others to have bonuses for not being above a certain percentage of any given religion and for having as many religions as possible.

I want corporations that work something like Civ 4 religion, that you can spread into other civilisations, and derive some benefits from having in cities of your opponents even if you are also benefiting those cities.

I want, in general, a larger variety of "soft" units with which one can oppose one's rivals without being at war with them.

I want more sophisticated diplomacy, with AIs that understand it; with a global reputation measure and also a trust measure reflecting any two civs' individual history. I want to be able to make per-turn agreements. I want to be able to exchange cities with an AI that assesses their worth sensibly. I want to be able to make multi-way agreements. I want different layers of "open borders" so that I can default send scouts through anyone else's territory and them through mine, but separate agreements would need to be made for caravans or settlers or military or other units. I want it to be possible to enforce uneven open borders, for example as part of a peace settlement, so that if I have just beaten Montezuma badly at war, I can demand the right to send my troops through his territory without allowing his troops to enter mine.

Finally, I want dinosaurs, because they are cool, but that may just be me.

In diplomacy:
When a peace treaty is made, there will be terms to the peace. (like versailles)
No longer will people worry about not being able to move their workers or settlers because of no 'open borders' agreements, all non-military units will have passage through foreign territory, unless decided otherwise.
Civs will be able to trade food and production (labor/materiel) just like resources or gold.

Quote:

This would be Argetnyx who mostly agrees with me that most of the changes that came from remaking Civ 4 from scratch were mistakes and we should go back to the tried-and-trusted Civ 3 model ? (Except there are places I think Civ 3 made mistakes and we should go back to the tried-and-trusted Civ 2 model, where I do not recall Argetnyx exressing a strong opinion either way.)

Yes it would, all of the civs have had mistakes in them. My idea of civ 5 is of a better game that includes much of the good things in previous games, but making it more realistic. Preferably with no loss to strategic gameplay.

PS: Thanks Camikaze, I owe you.

__________________Where were we?A work in progress: Projekt TotenkopfI don't care what they're called now, I'm a Civ3 player and THEY'RE STILL TILES!!!

Cities:
If a city has a barracks, it will be able to build a building and a unit at the same time.
A city will be able to trade with nearby cities for food and gold.
Corruption and waste will be brought back up for realism and a better 'civ' feel.
A city in danger from attack can conscript units on its own power, if it is supporting to your cause.
Naval units will not be able to pass through a city as if it was a coastal square.
Specialists will only be possible if the laborers of the city are collecting enough food to feed them.
You will no longer have great person 'production', but having great people appearing at unpredictable times.
A new building (probably 'military base') will allow cities to build armies in the same way as military academies did.
Bombardment from enemy artillery or aircraft could set back production on a building.

__________________Where were we?A work in progress: Projekt TotenkopfI don't care what they're called now, I'm a Civ3 player and THEY'RE STILL TILES!!!

Units will have a defensive and offensive value, specializing them to a certain strategy.

'Promotions' will no longer be available. When constructed in a barracks, a unit will get a 'specialization' (mountain, jungle, marine, etc.), making them more usefull and accurate.

A unit will have seperate offensive and defensive advantages over certain other types of units (Pike vs. mounted, etc.).

Units clearly surrounded and outnumbered will surrender, depending on their experience (con., reg., vet., eli.), and be used as workers.

When an attacking unit defeats another unit in a stack, the defeated unit may be 'captured' as a slave worker.

Military units will not be able to cross borders, unless stated so.

No units will be able to enter a non-city space with a fortified unit on it.

Fighters will be given more importance and time available.

If treated badly, or not given enough pay, a conscript or regular unit may defect.

Trade will no longer be instantanious, but carried by units to their destinations.

Paratroopers will have more power, and they will be able to land on enemy units, battling for the position.

Aircraft will recieve their own 'air tiles', where they can move and fight.

Specialized ground attack aircraft will be able to destroy enemy units and choose which unit in a stack to bomb.

If a foreign unit is caught on the border by another unit, pre-industrial, it may be attacked, but will be able to retreat.

Air bases will no longer 'teleport' units across the world, but specialized cargo planes will take units from there to another air base, or another city.

Paratroopers will be carried by their own cargo aircraft, with the possibility of being shot down/damaged.

Advanced air units will be able to 'retreat' from a battle with a less advanced unit.

Possibility: (may be too tactical) Instead of seperate turns, each civ will have a 'planning stage' and a 'movement stage'. This will make allow all civs to mave at once, without having to worry about playing speed. This will also make the 'steal plans' ability in espionage much more accurate and useful. This obviously needs work, but it sounds like a good idea.

__________________Where were we?A work in progress: Projekt TotenkopfI don't care what they're called now, I'm a Civ3 player and THEY'RE STILL TILES!!!

No longer will people worry about not being able to move their workers or settlers because of no 'open borders' agreements, all non-military units will have passage through foreign territory, unless decided otherwise.

So when you're just starting out the AIs default get to snatch all the best city spaces near you whether you control the ground nor not ? This does not appeal to me at all.

Certainly when I play Civ 3, I think of building my first few cities in terms not just of taking good spots, but of making sure other AIs can't get to the other nearby good spots without trespassing on my land, and this seems unlikely to go away as a strategic conisderation, so i think my point holds.

Here are some views as to how to make civ 5 a different experience. First of all, I agree that civ 5 should be a game with great depth and complexity leading to many different strategies.

1) Quantitive resources. Your population consumes a part of your production and you can make deals with other civs for x tons of imports/exports of y, to balance your needs in resources. For example you have 3 nuclear stations. Each consumes 1/2 t of uranium per turn, thus you need 1.5 tons of uranium per turn. You have a population of 50 million people, who all require 1m tons of wheat , x tons of y and q tons of z per turn. Their needs are influenced by how advanced you are and how rich/poor your population is.However building things and training units should consume a fixed amount of resources at the start of their production. Of course there is also a maintenance cost. That is maintenance in oil, in steel, in wood, in building materials, in food etc. In other words, build up a supply/demand economy.

2)Multiple queues. 2 main queues: Building queues and training queues. The size of the city (hammers) determines and how many units/buildings can be built/trained in the same time.

3)Budget management. In every turn, you gain x amount of money from the population through taxes (which should be adjustable and have an impact on your population's happiness). You should be able to manage how much gold goes to scientific research, education, healthcare system, military, hurrying up buildings/projects etc. The gold provided for each sector, should cover maintenance costs and finance further development. For example surplus money into the healthcare system finances building of hospitals, which could be either an automated process or the surplus money could just accumulate and you could spend it in any way you want.

4)Population meters. Happiness and health are 2 basic important measures but others also should be included that introduce stability, safety, corruption. Stability is used to introduce gameplay elements such as, revolutions (oppresed minorities wishing to become independent or general population revolutions due to unfair labour policies/very high corruption levels), civil wars (part of the population resisting civic changes, religious reasons). Safety (a less important measure), influenced by the size of your army and the existence of a police force, is included in the stability/happiness calculation. Same for corruption which also increases maintenance costs when high and depends on civics.

5)Deeper technology tree. Some kind of future element should be included. Space exploration/warfare/colonization. I know I'm asking for too much though..

6)Expanded diplomacy options. The ability to take/give loans. Plan a mutual military attack. Share intelligence on a target. In the occasion of DoWs without actually any war from your part, the AI should detect it and you should suffer diplomatic penalties, depending on the personality of your ally. Influence zones among other civs, that depend on your military strength and cultural/religious expansion.

7)Immigration. According to the happiness/health/stability meters, a small part of your population can leave for another country that you have open borders agreement. That process consists part of your cultural expansion.

8)Different terrain heights. Altitude has a major impact on the type of terrain.

9)Many different terrain bonuses/properties. Grassland A could be different from grassland B, in that it has +10% fertility to rice -> each tile has the property of fertility which influences production.

Soren Johnson said it was because the micromanagement was tedious instead of fun.

And are you saying that civ should be for hardcore gamers only? I think if civ went that way it would quickly die as a franchise. There's a reason why SimCity 4 was the last version of SimCity made (SimCity Societies does NOT count) - it was too complex for new players. As a player who started with civ 4 micromanagement is not my cup of tea and if civ 5 relied on it I would definitely stay with civ 4.

And are you saying that civ should be for hardcore gamers only? I think if civ went that way it would quickly die as a franchise. There's a reason why SimCity 4 was the last version of SimCity made (SimCity Societies does NOT count) - it was too complex for new players. As a player who started with civ 4 micromanagement is not my cup of tea and if civ 5 relied on it I would definitely stay with civ 4.

Civ should be not for hardcore gamers, but the people who actually want to experiance the game, not just play it. The reason why some of the Civ3 players that stayed was because civ4 took the control and flexibility out of the game. Many Civ3 players think that civ4 is a step back. I'm not saying that Civ5 should rely on micromanagement, but to have the option made available for more control over your game.

__________________Where were we?A work in progress: Projekt TotenkopfI don't care what they're called now, I'm a Civ3 player and THEY'RE STILL TILES!!!

Micromanagement adds some more degrees of freedom IMO. Of course reducing micromanagement should be an option too, by providing automated solutions. I am more towards having more control, lengthy games and realism, but it still is a game so gameplay comes first. CIV being turn-based and not real time, is more about complexity and strategy. Even real time can be quiet complex and realistic some times, like ANNO 1404.

Diplomacy
1. Remove the erm... humorous tone to diplomacy, on first contact you should be greeted in a way that that particular leader would greet someone, perhaps having humorous diplomacy could be turned on in the options menu...

2. On that same note make the images of leaders more realistic looking, I don't really like the cartoonish look of some of the leaderheads.

3. I agree with having terms for a peace treaty IE War guilt (Relations hit with all nations) reparations (X gold to winner per turn for X turns)

4. Ability to "red out" items on your side of the diplomacy screen so as to avoid constant nagging by Monty to go to war.

Economy

1. Deficit spending so long as you are on good terms with another nation you should be able to borrow money from them. This will of course require some changes in how money works

2. Exchange rate, more or less a pipe dream but I'd like to see an exchange rate, the more bullion you have the more your paper currency is worth and vice versa, this will effect trade and happniess and the usefulness of economic improvements

3. Economic stats: Prosperity, Bull Market, Neutral, Recessions, and Depressions should be included depending on how you are fairing economically
General

4. I'd like to see the value of a resource be detirmined by supply and demand, for instance if everyone has sugar sugar isn't worth much in a trade, but if no one has gems gems are worth a lot. The same should go for generated by luxuries.

1. Improve rivers vastly, ships should be able to travel across larger ones. If multiple civs are built along the same river conflict should arise if people upstream are polluting or building a dam.

2. Terrain height should defiantly be a part of the game.

3. More natural features, salt water lakes, caverns, waterfalls etc.

4. Strategic points: Moutain passes, river fords etc. Terrain can be a great weapon in times of war, just ask William Wallace, Leonidas, Sun Tzu...

Government:
1. More civics, the civics in Civ IV were too general. I think they should expand the new constitution system from Civ Col. In addition each civic needs to have good and bad traits. Each civic option should have 2 or more sub options. (IE Representation by population or all representation is equal, enslavement of a certain group, or through judicial means. A one party, two party, or multi-party system?) that have their own consequences.

2. Building off that there should be a complex senate, unhappy citizens vote in senators from your party's opposition who will vote down your wars and make peace without your consent. If you don't like it then you can change to another civic.

UN/AP
1. Allow members to leave/be expelled/refuse to join.
2. Make votes trade items (IE Oil for voting no on World wide Free Religion)All
3. Allow a second UN to be built to oppose the first one.

General:
1. "Cancer clusters" instead of global warming as a result of nukes.